You called this school a joke, said you were happy that you didn't apply and then went on to talk negatively about their undergrad in this forum... like it feels like, from my perspective, that you are dishing the school and clearly don't like it.
I had a long talk with someone on the admissions committee for this medical school weeks ago, specifically about this email and holistic review. The email about MCAT is sent to everyone they feel may be interested (regardless if your score was good) - it is a marketing campaign to encourage all students to apply even if they don't feel confident about their score. It is actually the opposite of what you think, but I understand the confusion and I was also confused. There are also many schools with similar MCAT averages (Columbia/NYU/Stanford/Hopkins/Mayo/UChicago/UPenn/Vanderbilt/Yale - just to name a few).
Also, the medical school launched a huge scholarship campaign in 2019 that I also suggest people look at because it is incredible. They committed over $100 mill to MD scholarships in order to provide free or reduced tuition to the majority of incoming students.
Furthermore, I looked into the whole median income of their undergrad institution and I now recognize that this number and comparison to other schools comes from a 2017 article from the NYT and the data used from the article is from the class of 2014. Not to say this isn't a problem, but context is important.
I think this reddit post summed it up well responding to a similar post about the median income and NYT article:
Now, this is not to say that WashU doesn’t still have areas to improve upon on the front of socioeconomic diversity and supporting lower/middle income students. As a low-income student myself, and friends with many others, not here to contest this. What I can say is that WashU WOKE UP to the fact that NYT called them out SPECIFICALLY in an article attached to the awesome data project you linked. Created entire new programs, more than doubled Pell Grant student numbers, partnered with QuestBridge and other orgs for first gen/low-income students, dedicated more funding, built out new offices, etc etc.
Sure, now, we’re about average amongst our peers, at least on the Pell Grant number anyway. Not to say we should accept this and carry on, but we hit our target of 15% at least a couple of years before our expected date. Again, not to say that attendance all of a sudden means a perfect experience. It can be a mixed bag at times, but what I know for sure is that WashU has made it possible for me to be at WashU in ways that it HAD to. And having worked directly with SFS staff, they really wish they could do the same for every last person they hear from. Please, do not let this post suggest to you that WashU doesn’t care. If you want, you can say the Trustees don’t, but every other person I’ve talked to at least pays lipservice (but also puts significant $$ relative to our peers) behind trying to improve.
Keep in mind that prior to the beginning of Wrighton’s chancellorship 25ish years ago, we were at best a top tier REGIONAL institution. Sure, Danforth did a lot, but Wrighton built out infrastructure and MONEY. We’re fortunate to have a top-tier MBA program and med school to get rich alums, but that didn’t really exist for us prior to relatively recently. We don’t have centuries of deep-pocket/well-connected alums that Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc do. Yes, the endowment is significant, but we still draw significant portions of our yearly budget from tuition due to our public service hospital and the fact that earnings from that endowment haven’t been around all that long. We provide a TON of opportunities for students (academic, extracurricular, graduate, etc) despite some relative limitations, and higher income students are relied upon to in part help cover the expenses to make that possible for everyone, including those with lesser funding. This is part of why there have been so many. Unfortunately, that ends up falling at times on folks that truly cannot afford it, and frankly I hate that. I hate that college costs at all, let alone what costs it does. But I guess I’d argue the system is a lot more to blame than the people that keep WashU going day-to-day.
This has been rambling, but I get so frustrated every time I see this posted because it lacks context, and frankly it scares away people like me from ever thinking they could find success at a place like this.
. In line for MD now
